12:30 a.m. - June 14, 2002
Rubens, Grass, and Dad
Today: Mad Munich Museum Mania continues! I went to Alte Pinothek and will attack the Neue Pinothek tomorrow. I was standing in front of paintings, trying to recall periods of art and failing. Rusty remembrance of art history...and then...even my art history course in high school didn't prepare me for the Rubens I saw in the museum. Those little pictures and slides just simply do not prepare one for the vivid colors and the sheer size of some of his paintings. I was in awe. I hope my visit to the Neue Pinothek will give me the same sense of sheer happiness to see my art history course learnings come to life...

And the other is not so much related to this topic, but I just had to share. I reread an email that I got maybe last week, and my friend said, "anyway, i would love to have a view of the alps from my room -- but i *do* have a view of my neighbor's really nice lawn, and i guess that's just as beautiful . . . :)"

This gave me the giggles tonight. All I could think of was my dad's never-ending battle with the entity known as our front lawn. I swear, in the past seven or eight years I've lived in my house, my dad has been waging war on our lawn and its resistance to being like all the other lawns in the neighborhood, which are perfectly manicured, lush, green spans of grass.

Our lawn, though, has been infested by grubs (then we got rid of 'em), then we got spots in our lawn, so we had to plant grass in the dead areas. Crabgrass was also another antagonist. Out came the weed-killers. The crab-grass-infested areas became bare. We hired a grass guy or something to do the dirty work this time. Then the grass turned out to be the wrong kind (the landscape company used lower-quality seed. I guess that's why their service was so cheap.), so we'd have lovely bluegrass interspersed with little lakes of cheap, fast growing, thick grass. The sort you find in neighborhood parks or maybe the schoolyard. I guess in a way, it would sort of be like those crop design aliens landed and made parts of our lawn taller than others. Call it an abstract rendering in grass.

Finally my dad waged the biggest war on our lawn.

This is how I found out: Last year, coming home on a weekend from college, I was pulling into our suburb, and I see that my lawn is hay-colored. So I think, "ah, dad's reseeded the entire lawn and there's straw on it."

I was wrong. I drove closer and saw that our entire lawn was made up of dead grass. The whole thing (but our backyard has stayed a lovely lush green all the time we've lived there). I was so shocked.

(My neighbor asked my dad, "Charlie, I was wondering. Was there some sort of parasite that ate your lawn?")

Apparently, my dad sprayed the entire front lawn with weedkiller to eradicate the various grasses that were growing, and hired someone to reseed the entire front lawn (My mom: "Charlie, don't hire the same people who planted park grass on our lawn."). So he hired some more "expensive" lawn people, and they reseeded the entire thing. So for my graduation party two weeks later, the lawn was growing in patches. If it was all dirt or something, I'd be totally embarassed beyond belief.

When I left for Germany, there was a lake of dead, brown grass in the middle of the lawn. I wonder if the grass is growing this year?

I hope it is, because whenever I went to get the mail or go to my car in the driveway...I'd see cars belonging to people who didn't live in my neighborhood, slow down to maybe one mile per hour, their heads facing my house...and I'm sure our family was the talk of the suburb, and maybe some other suburbs too.

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